As a lover of rhythm games and haver of anxiety, this game couldn't be more up my alley. Unfortunately it's a little too blisteringly difficult for me. It's the double whammy of it not doing a great job of explaining its mechanics and it being too easy for one mistake to cascade into a catastrophic failure that does it in for me. Still the aesthetic is incredible and its one of the most unique games I've ever played. If I could actually finish it, it would probably be one of my favorite games ever.

This game just makes me sad. At first blush it seems like a solid improvement over the first game, with better graphics and general presentation, which is exactly what I wanted from it. As soon as the shooting starts, though, it falls apart. The first game had this great, dynamic combat with real weight to the weapons; that's totally gone here, replaced with anemic-feeling guns and bland combat that could be from any late '00s/early '10s shooter. It's the one thing the original really had going for it, and without it the lacks any identity. I could get into the games issues with women or dumb mental health tropes, but it's not even worth it when the fundamentals are this weak. A significantly worse game than the original in all the ways that matter.

I have a lot of memories tied up in this game. It was the first game I downloaded when I discovered piracy (my laptop at the time only had integrated graphics, which should tell you about how well that went) and I spent what seemed like the longest summer playing and replaying it when it was finally released for Xbox 360. All of that's why it's probably so hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that it's fifteen years old now; in my head it's still the fancy PC shooter just out of my reach (see also: Crysis), and I expect it always will be to some extent.

Anyway, as for the actual game, it runs reasonably well on modern hardware - there's a fix you need to download to make the engine play nice and I had to modify the FOV to something that didn't make me sick, but otherwise you're golden. When I first booted it up I was shocked at how badly the visuals have aged; character models look like they're relatives of PS1-era Lara Croft, and no matter how good the lighting was for the time, the environments look incredibly rudimentary today. They all bleed together so much that it's easy to get turned around and end up aimlessly wandering through the same two identical hallways for fifteen minutes at a time. This isn't exactly helped by the fact that most of the game takes place in the same office building. It's fair to say that whatever appeal this game had as a graphics powerhouse has long since faded. The story is a mixed bag. Personally it didn't do much for me, and the scares barely even registered as scares anymore, but there is a certain B-movie schlock to it that I'm sure certain horror fans will like.

If all of this is sounding awfully negative, that's because I haven't gotten to the one part of the game that's actually aged well: the combat. FEAR's gunplay is its single saving grace, and the only reason I finished my most recent playthrough. It has a kineticism and sense of speed to it that still stands out, the way enemies' bodies crumple as you fire at them in slow motion is incredibly satisfying (the audio design deserves a quick nod here as well), and to top it all off the AI is surprisingly solid. It's hard to overstate just how this one element elevates the rest of the game. Is it enough to recommend now, fifteen years later? As long as you're prepared for what you're getting yourself into and you're still interested, I'd say it's worth a shot; and if you do decide to play it, I guarantee you'll like the combat.

There are moments where the old magic still works, but just as many where it doesn't. The main issues for me were the story and the visuals. It's clear Bungie were struggling to extract every ounce of power from the 360, and that's understandable, but these days it mostly manifests itself in lots of repetitive, barren-feeling environments. Some of them do retain a unique, desolate atmosphere, though. As for the story, let's just say games have gotten dramatically better at storytelling in the past ten years - I can see where the major dramatic beats are and how they're supposed to land, but they mostly fell flat for me due to poor characterization and exposition. The military fetishization is pretty off-putting as well.

As for the mechanics, the combat mostly holds up, though occasionally you can feel the tension between the design of the older games in the series and the more COD-influenced direction shooters were heading in at the time. In some ways it feels like a bridge between the previous generation of shooters and the current one. Unless you're a fan of the series or have particular nostalgia for the this game, it's mostly of interest as a document of where AAA gaming stood in 2010.

Do you ever feel like a game was made specifically for you? That's the feeling I get from Murder By Numbers - or maybe I'm just underestimating the appeal of a Picross puzzler with surprisingly deft portrayal of queer characters. The writing is the main draw here (though the artwork is quite good as well) and keeps things chugging along even when the puzzles start to drag. Aside from a lack of variety my only other complaint is that despite a generally smart script its portrayal of the police is almost completely noncritical. I understand that would be a heavy lift for a game that's meant to be fairly breezy, but it's also weird for a game with so many queer and nonwhite characters to sidestep the issue completely.